1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a miniature golf course and more particularly to a miniature golf putting course placed inside a maze and which is then varied by a series of gates to change the course.
2. Description of the Prior Art
One of the problems of running a miniature golf putting course is how to bring back repeat customers. Apparently, quite often, after a person has played a course a first time, the challenge is gone and they often do not return.
The conventional playing field for the game of golf is usually divided into eighteen holes, although quite often, only nine holes. The entire field of eighteen holes is normally broken down into two areas of nine holes each. The designing of a golf playing field is a highly skilled art, each area or group of holes, and each individual hole, being carefully designed to accommodate the golf play of various levels and grades of skill, from the better male golfer and top-skilled female golfer on down to the lesser skilled male and female players, as well as the younger golfers.
Each hole of a golf course comprises a tee area, a fairway, rough areas, and a green which includes a cup. The player pits his skill as an offense in moving the ball from the tee into the cup on the green in the least possible number of strokes, against a defense provided by the designer of the golf course, natural and pseudo-natural hazards. Natural hazards provided include such things as the use of hazards of terrain and topography, including undulations, contours, obstacles and obstructions, and including the use of trees, shrubs, bushes and other vegetation, and including the texture and height of grasses which effect the lie and roll of the ball.
Pseudo-natural hazards which can be built by the designer, include the making of contours and undulations to direct the play of the ball, the provision of sand traps, water holes, deliberately place vegetation, such as trees and shrubs, the placement of wind breaks, and the like.
The above principles also apply to the design of miniature golf courses and in addition, in the absence of size of a full sized golf course, designers must be more creative to provide a course that is challenging for all golfers but not intimidating or impossible to some.
In the absence of natural hazards, the defense against the golfer is carried into a miniature putting golf course by use of contours, undulations, plateaus, obstructions, curves, plateaus, rolls, swales and the like, all of which control the direction and amount of movement of the ball when it encounters and is played on the green area.
In view of the above complications involved in the designing and making of a golf course, it will be apparent that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to design a conventional golf course which has a single circuit or route that is taken by the golfers, in which the course is sufficiently difficult and interesting for the better golfers as well as the regular or fair golfers. It is even more difficult to provide a challenge for the golfer who has played a course more than once and is familiar with the layout and its appearance.
A first prior art golf course layout is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,156,470 to Newkirk which discloses a golf course embodying a plurality of different routes or circuits to be followed by the golfers, with one such route or circuit having substantially more difficult hazards than another such circuit. Each of the greens is provided with more than one fairway approach, where more than one route or circuit may be taken by the golfers to provide the same effect as a plurality of different golf courses, without requiring more than the normal number of greens of a single golf course. An additional green is placed on each fairway in order to accommodate the poorer and younger golfers so that each hole will be greatly shortened for such golfers, and so that these additional greens can be alternatively used by the regular golfers to reduce wear on the normal greens at the ends of the fairways.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,076,586 to Taniguchi et al discloses a miniature golf links which can afford golf players a feeling of golf play as experienced at a formal 9-hole golf links without using a large area for construction. Three courses are arrayed in a triangular configuration. In each one of two courses among the three courses are disposed one tee position for a long course, one tee position for a middle course, one tee for a short course and a putting green, and in the other one course are disposed three tee positions for middle courses and a putting green, making it possible to play golf of nine holes, par thirty six, by playing golf while going around the three courses either in the clockwise direction or in the counterclockwise direction.
Each of the references uses a different approach to change the alignment of the holes. Neither of the patents disclose a miniature golf course nor do they use swing gates to change the hole layout.